For residents living in Frontier Communications' footprint, the option for gigabit speed is expected to roll out in the next few months, said President and Chief Operating Officer Daniel McCarthy. Frontier's territory includes the suburbs around Portland but not the city itself,

McCarthy and Frontier’s board of directors are in town this week for one of the company’s regularly scheduled board meetings. The board regularly meets in different company locations so members can meet with employees and customers. This is board's first trip to Portland.

Stamford, Connecticut-based Frontier came to the Oregon and Washington market through the $8.9 billion acquisition of Verizon Communication Corp.’s landline telephone business. The deal also included Verizon’s fiber optic cable and Internet services.

“Just over the last three years we have put over $128 million in investment in this (geographic) area specifically,” McCarthy said. “For us, this is one of the most modern markets we have. It’s very fiber rich.”

McCarthy noted that virtually all Frontier customers have the fiber optics running through their neighborhoods.

“The architecture of our network is so robust and so state-of-the-art we can offer a gig service, for instance, into an area where Comcast can't really do that,” he said. “People talk about Google coming in, but that is something that we can do today and it is something we will do in the next couple of quarters.”

None of Frontier’s residential customers currently have gigabit Internet, but the company is making minor network upgrades to allow the service in the near future. McCarthy declined to discuss pricing for such a service or the exact number of customers Frontier currently has in the region.

In the meantime, the company has pushed Internet speeds higher.

When the super-fast service does roll out, McCarthy noted it wont be limited to certain neighborhoods or rely on neighbors convincing each other to sign up.

As Google rolls out its service in certain cities it only puts the infrastructure in where a critical mass of neighbors sign up. This has led to criticism that affluent neighborhoods might get the service before others.

Since moving into the Oregon and Washington market, McCarthy said the company has focused on its video products. That's changing as customers tell the company they want gigabit Internet.

“We see positive growth on the video side, but the trend, and it’s not just here but across the country, is people are using their bandwidth to do what they want with video whether it's Netflix or Apple TV or Amazon,” McCarthy said. “The key to making that successful is a good broadband product.”